Process Mining for Carbon Accounting: An Analysis of Requirements and Potentials

Organizations are considered as key contributors to environmental deterioration caused by resource consumption, waste, and carbon emissions. In an aim to reduce their carbon footprints, organizations are increasingly starting to account for their environmental impact and are seeking new ways to improve their operations. Previous research indicates that only through changing their processes, companies can become more sustainable. This, however, requires a sound understanding of how unsustainable processes are and to what extent a change can facilitate more sustainable ways to operate. For this purpose, this paper examines how process mining can support carbon accounting in terms of decision support for carbon reduction. Based on a review of related literature and interviews with process mining experts, requirements and potentials of process mining to support carbon accounting are identified. The findings indicate that with process mining, it becomes possible to create the much-needed process transparency by incorporating carbon data into the process model. This allows to measure the carbon footprint per process step and along the execution of processes. Thereby, practitioners are not only able to evaluate the carbon performance on granular process levels but in fact are empowered to establish carbon reduction measures without neglecting the process design and process workflow.